Republicans Anonymous

The news then:

But in a sign of the open rifts within the Council, the French and Russian foreign ministers both received applause when they said there was no justification yet for a war with Iraq.

These unusual and undiplomatic displays caused German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, current council president, to ask for order inside the chamber. (Source: BBC News Arms report deepens UN split, Feb. 19, 2003.)

The pundits then:

CHARLES KUPCHAN (a former director for European affairs on the National Security Council under President Clinton): I think in the first instance, it makes clear that there is a broad difference in how the U.S. is approaching the process of the U.N. and how the French are going about it. I think for the U.S. there is a decision probably last summer that said we need to go to war against Iraq. And then the Bush administration said let's go to the U.N. to build support for it.

I think the French said, let's go to the U.N. and see if we can find a way to avoid war. War is a last resort. It may come. We will be there if the proof of weapons of mass destruction is there. But we don't see that proof yet...

...most Security Council members are lining up behind France, not with the United States. World opinion is generally saying we want more evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Even Americans are saying President Bush has yet to make the case.

And so I think if the U.S. goes down this route without broader support at the U.N. not just the French but other key members in the Security Council, it will essentially be... to say we are putting ourselves above the law and I think that what we will see is a real undermining of the sense of multilateralism of shared interests that has held the west together over the last few decades.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Babbin, your response.

JED BABBIN (former deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration): Well, frankly multilateralism is what got us into this pickle to start with. We listened to our so-called multi-lateral partners in 1991 and did not remove Saddam then...This is not an issue of multilateralism. This is an issue of a direct threat. I also wanted to remark mainly Mr. Kupchan is saying there is no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. On the contrary, there is enormous evidence, and if Mr. Blix had made a serious inspection in the places where we have good reason to believe that the bad stuff is, he would have found things.
(Source: PBS Newshour Resisting War France suggests it might veto any new U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. Jan 21, 2003 [emphasis added.])

Too bad the French weren't as bold in telling the truth as W and his Bush League minions were about hiding it:

French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence
The foreign spy service warned the U.S. various times before the war that there was no proof Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ex-officials say.

By Tom Hamburger, Peter Wallsten and Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writers

PARIS — More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.

Bush and his minions KNEW they were lying about the Iraq WMD threat and invaded anyway. Sounds like an illegal war of aggression to me...